on Ashley Todd

I could not resist putting this image here. Ashley Todd = B for effort.

I believe it goes without saying that Ms Todd is a nutcase– very nutty. She will walkaround for the rest of her life, well for as long as it will take that brand to heal, with a B on her cheek. How dumb is that? (If you haven’t heard about Ashley Todd, read the full story here)

Anyway, on a bigger symptom, that I will coin the Ashley Todd mindframe. Had she said a man, any man, even if an Obama supporter had attacked her then things would have been different. As it is, she has brought up the elephant in the room. Its not that race has not been discussed (do you know that CNN is more race-obsessed than any other channel…. not in a bad way, I don’t think. They are always interviewing black people for the black experience. And even though I like MSNBC their cast is not diverse), its not that we haven’t heard racial slurs in reference to Obama at McCain/Palin events, and to Obama volunteers…. . No, we have heard all that. What Todd has done is bring this discussion to a national audience. And I hope that there will be some discussion.

I hope that there will be “undecided” voters who will pause for a minute and think about why they are voting for McCain or not voting at all (white Democrats who are staying home on election day). I hope that this event will have Americans, especially white Americans, including liberal Americans, to reflect on this society and to be begin forging a way and a discussion that is not based on the “black narrative.

One more thing on Todd…. if there had been a black man around that ATM who resembled her description (which was very generic, well except for the shiny shoes… muggers do not wear shiny shoes), he would have been arrested… and if she had been smarter, like if she had lied that she had been mugged in a dark alley, and branded an “O” instead of a “B” then things would have been quite different. The archetypal black dude will never catch a break.

Obama is NOT an exception, there are intelligent blacks as there are asians and whites. Brown people are not different from white people. Road to recovery?

Watch Rachel Maddow and Princeton’s Melissa Harris-Lacewell.